Morgan Knox, an Afro-Latina detective in 1930s New York City, is called to look at a body--the body of a man whom she'd recently met with. The remains are bones and ashes, with a strange coating, and nothing else burned. Is this connected to the case he recently hired her for?
Quite possibly. Morgan was a field nurse during the Great War, and she came back from that experience seeing bizarre and horrifying supernatural phonomena. The more she pokes into this case, the more strange and confounding things appear. The dead man, Siverek, turns out not to be who he presented himself as. His true history is shocking. In his more recent life, he was a book collecter whose fellow collectors seem to be equally odd and suspect. The clues lead her to Craddock, a man from a previous case--who is dead.
The more she digs, the more she finds things that just don't seem possible--unless the things she sees are more real than she wants to believe.
In 1930s New York, being Afro-Latina is a big enough complication for her life. Being a private detective is a strange occupation for a woman, too. Add to that, she's also queer. She has friends, Abe the cab driver; Danny, her secretary; Ray, a cop and her ex-husband. Also the women who have been her lovers, including a woman doctor in the coroner's office. All of these people are strong in their own ways, like Morgan, and in their own ways just don't fit in, also like Morgan.
With flashbacks to her war years, the emergence of strange, even Lovecraftian figures, and a dangerous cult that wants Morgan for their own reasons, it's terrifying and compelling.
This is, like all Serial Box productions, a serial that was released one chapter per week, and you can listen to the audio production, or read the ebook version. I really enjoyed it, and I say that as someone who doesn't like much horror. Recommended.
I received this audio production and ebook for free from the publisher, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
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